![]() “What a pussy,” she thinks, listening to Wayne cry out for her. She can’t stand his incessant calling for her all night and ignores his pleas for her to soothe him. Wayne falls madly in love with her of course, but it just turns him into a needy, blabbering, mess. It doesn’t quite go according to Elaine’s plan though. ‘Poor’ Wayne didn’t stand a chance Elaine bedazzles him with her rainbow lined coat - a technique I’ve never quite seen before when it comes to the art of luring men into bed. The acting is deliberately wooden and hammed up which just makes it more outrageously entertaining. Within minutes he’s like a devoted lapdog and agrees without hesitation to take her to his cabin in the countryside for a roll in the hay.Īt the cabin, Elaine doses Wayne with a hallucinogenic potion and then seduces him in a fabulously camp and kaleidoscopic sequence. Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) a Literature professor at the local college, only has to glance in her direction and he’s spellbound. You’re probably thinking, ‘So how exactly is this a feminist film?’ it really is, but you have to get to the end to see it.Įlaine first claps eyes on victim number 1 while eating a sandwich on a bench. So that’s exactly what she sets out to do after preparing a concoction and performing a ritual to find the perfect man. She believes that totally giving a man whatever he wants-through sex and servitude-is the way to win his heart. Elaine doesn’t believe this is the way to keep a man interested. They have a modern relationship, with mutual respect and equality. Trish is married - happily - to Richard (Robert Seeley). And yes, I am going to use every single witchy pun I can in this review.Įlaine and Trish chat about their love lives. Yes, I think it’s fair to say I have fallen under her spell. Her face suits the ’60s style of makeup, in fact, she manages to pull off wearing the most garish colours of eyeshadow and still look totally bewitching. I find this captivating - she really was the perfect choice for the leading lady. ![]() It’s here that we really start to see Samantha Robinson’s amazing ability to switch her enchanting wide-eyed expression to that of resting bitch face - in less than a second. It’s a phenomenon barely seen on screen since Lynch & Frost sprinkled the ’50s all over Twin Peaks, except maybe in Legion (set in present-day) where all the female characters (and Oliver) could have been plucked straight out of A Clockwork Orange.Įlaine makes herself right at home and goes for a Victorian-style afternoon tea with Trish. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was about this. Yet it’s not just Elaine that looks like a cross between Diana Rigg and Barbara Eden, no, everyone is styled this way. I assumed in the beginning that the story was set in the ’60s, that was until I saw modern-day vehicles (except for Elaine’s classic sports car which threw me off the scent at first) and people using cell phones. David Mullen, an expert in reproducing classical camera styles. She wrote, directed and edited, storyboarded every shot and worked closely with her cinematographer, M. The film took seven-and-a-half years to complete, and Biller completed pretty much every task herself. It’s drenched in Technicolor, with touches of Italian horror, Hammer and late Hitchcock everywhere. The clothing, the detail of every trinket, painting, every item of furniture is exquisitely retro perfect - it must have taken Biller years to collect all these items. Shot on 35mm camera, the film looks exactly like it was made in the ’60s. It is a glorious psychedelic palace, less like Munsters more like Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie. But inside it has been decorated to Barbara’s tastes by Interior Designer, Trish (Laura Waddell). The house is a fabulously purple gothic structure that could, from the outside, have been taken straight from The Munsters. After her misogynist husband, Jerry leaves her for another woman (and he mysteriously ends up dead), she flees to California to stay at her Wicca mentor, Barbara’s house. The story follows Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a young and mesmerisingly beautiful white witch who wants nothing more than to be loved. ![]() On the contrary, Anna Biller’s 2016 film is a modern feminist fantasy that reverses the roles of misogyny in film, and I am almost embarrassed to say that it made me self-reflect more than I could ever have imagined a film that plays like The Love Witch could. I went into The Love Witch with little expectation other than this was going to be a tongue-in-cheek horror/comedy throwback to the (thankfully?) bygone era of sexploitation films, and for all intents and purposes, its veneer is exactly that.
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